Robin Hood meets Ancient China in new, action-packed fantasy serial Wandering Phoenix and Roaming Tiger. Follow the adventures of the title characters, their trusty friends and vengeful enemies as they battle oppressive rulers and fight for their freedom.

Even better, the first episode is absolutely free, so you can try and see if you like the style without parting with a penny.

Episodes 2 and 3 have been written and will be submitted for release (probably have a pre-order period of a week or 10 days between them, something like that) shortly. I plan on putting in episode 2 later today, so if you like episode 1, the next part will be available very soon.

Wandering Phoenix and Roaming Tiger should be out within a couple of weeks, perhaps just one. Unfortunately getting price-matched (to make the first episode free, is a minor faff on Amazon, so I can't be more precise on timing.

The first part, as mentioned, will be free and is quite dinky to allow readers to see if the story and style is for them. It's a fast-paced, action-packed story of heroism and treachery, gallant outlaws and oppressive rulers. Episodes two and three will be put up for pre-order once the first episode is free, and are both considerably larger.

Always hard to tell how new things will go down, and this is a considerable departure for me in some ways. There's humour, as usual, but it's very direct, strongly influenced by the writing style of Three Kingdoms and Outlaws of the Marsh. The setting's entirely new too (a mythologised version of Ancient China), and it's a bit less grim than some of my other fantasy.

Looking slightly further ahead, I'm aspiring to a June/July release for Traitor's Prize, but there's still work to do so I'll update nearer the time regarding publication. This is considerably sooner than I'd initially planned, though (the pencilled-in release date was a year after Kingdom Asunder, so November/December) so even a small delay still means it's coming out months in advance of the anticipated release date.

So, keep your eyes peeled. There'll be a free taster of Wandering Phoenix and Roaming Tiger soon, two more episodes to come, and then the middle part of The Bloody Crown Trilogy.